Update on Snickers

The other day I talked about the Snickers ad and how I thought it was being blown out of porportion. Well, one of my regular readers (I think I’m up to 3!) pointed out what the hoopla was a little bit more about accurately. I asked if I could just copy her comment:

I only want to clarify something about the Snickers thing.

The Snickers one that aired certainly wasnâ€™t the big issue. The big issues were the football players watching the ads on the Snickers website and making comments about how disgusting it was to see two men kissing as well as other variations on the ad that they were having fans vote on what woudl air for the Dayton 500. That is why the outrage displayed by MSF, GLAAD and HRC.

On the website one such ad to vote on was titled the WRENCH – instead of ripping out their own chest hair they had one man club the other over the head with a Wrench because of the kiss only to then have retailation of slamming the other guys head in a car trunk. You can find that version on Youtube I believe still. Itâ€™s just plain wrongâ€¦

As a huge supporter of MSF there is a reason Judy Shepard and others stood up to Mars and demanded the ads be pulled from the site. Itâ€™s also interesting to note that the ad agency first contacted GLAAD to review the ads only to change their mind before showing them and that commericial industry insiders are saying that some people from the ad agency will be out of jobs because Mars is so angry about the contraversy.

This one in particular wasnâ€™t mocking homophobia but instead displaying homophobic motivated violence against another person as well as watching â€˜big macho football playersâ€™ mock how â€˜gayâ€™ the ads wereâ€¦.

Considering the reputation of homophobia in professional sports this isnâ€™t surprising that was the reaction by these players but it seems very calculated that once again the gay community was used to give Snickers more ink after the SuperBowl – however not speaking up about it would have been wrong

I can already here a couple of people thinking in their head “Sean…why does this ad qualify as being offensive when the robot jumping off the bridge, which offended another group, didn’t?” Simple. These ads are showing that the most logical way to respond to a homosexual advance, even if unintentional, is to harm the other other person. They have to do something “manly” to regain themselves. Then to run the ads online with footballer players mocking them? Way to get rid of those professional sports homophobia stereotypes guys.

In conclusion…
Robots committing suicide = funny
Men hitting each other with wrenches to prove they aren’t gay = not funny